Preview: Charlotte FC at DC United

It's do or die at a rare Audi Field knockout round game

It’s the US Open Cup’s round of 16. Along with the USL’s Pittsburgh Riverhounds, there are 15 MLS teams alive in the competition. Since most of the good MLS teams didn’t even enter the tournament, these teams can safely be considered MLS’ lower class. And Philadelphia. Of course it’s Philadelphia that Pittsburgh has to play; sorry guys. We’re all rooting for you.

A lot has changed since DC United’s glory days, but the team’s approach hasn’t: play bench players early in the tournament, then shift to playing starters if the trophy seems like it might be in sight. I haven’t gone back to see when this shift was executed in the past, but Troy Lesesne played a number of starters in the round of 32 and I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t already been taking the competition more seriously than any previous DC United coach. It’s not hard to understand why: DC has effectively no chance at any other trophy and Lesesne is, well, maybe not quite on the hot seat, but the seat is warm.

The Lineup

Based on the substitution patterns on the weekend, I’m expecting a full set starters for this one minus the injured players (Christian Benteke, of course, but also Lukas MacNaughton). But, uh, who are the starters at this point, exactly? Not sure! There are five players I consider sure starters (Peglow, Aaron Herrera, Lucas Bartlett, Kye Rowles, David Schnegg) and then there are questions about each other position. Will Kim Joon Hong get another start? Is Garrison Tubbs or Conner Antley preferred in central defense? Has Randall Leal surpassed Jared Stroud as a starter? And wait, Stroud was an unused sub against Nashville, is he actually healthy?

That’s my best guess: Lesesne goes back to the 5-2-3 and tries to play aggressively at home, more aggressively than the 5-4-1 he’s been doing. Of course they started in a 4-4-2 shape last game, so that could happen again.

If it weren’t for the injuries, I think Lesesne would start Hosei Kijima in midfield, but with few meaningful attacking subs available I think he gets held in reserve to come on along with Randall Leal. I know some people still think Leal should start; maybe he will start over Stroud.

The real question is can anything be done about Jacob Murrell being helpless as an isolated central forward? I thought about a false #9, I guess with Jackson Hopkins or Peglow, but that’s a very tough way to play and I don’t think they could shift into that in just a couple days. So instead, maybe just try to get more numbers forward so Murrell isn’t so isolated? If he actually gets the ball near the box (as opposed to near the halfway line) he’s obviously quite dangerous.

One Open Cup wrinkle is that the benches are smaller than MLS games so there will be just seven subs. Teams can also sub a sixth player if the match goes to extra time. With DC’s 0-0 antics of late, that’s a real possibility.

Backup goalkeeper: Jordan Farr

Attacking subs: Hosei Kijima, Randall Leal, Rida Zouhir

Defensive subs: Derek Dodson, Conner Antley, Boris Enow

Not selected: Hakim Karamoko, Fidel Barajas, Gavin Turner

Injured: Christian Benteke, Gabriel Pirani, Dominique Badji, Lukas MacNaughton

The Opposition: Charlotte FC

Last season, Charlotte had a below average offense but the league’s second best defense. Kristijan Kahlina won Goalkeeper of the Year on the back of a really strong shotstopping season, but otherwise their defensive talent seemed unexceptional. My interpretation was that their manager, Dean Smith, lined them up very conservatively.

The obvious thing to do, though, was to invest more in the offense, which if the defense stayed elite would turn them into a serious MLS Cup contender. So over the past two years they’ve been working on doing just that. At the beginning of last season they brought in a young DP forward, Liel Abada, then at midseason they got Spanish attacker Pep Biel on loan, and then for this season they got Wilfried Zaha on loan as well.

So how’s all that working out for them?

Well, overall, this season offense has been a little better and the defense is much, much worse. Charlotte also got off to a hot start with 6 wins, 1 draw, and 2 losses. Starting a month ago, however, the wheels have fallen off with five straight losses in MLS play where they scored just 5 goals and gave up 14.

Liel Abada has been pretty consistently scoring goals at a rate somewhat under one goal every two games, which would be great for most players but disappointing from a DP (Christian Benteke doubled Abada’s G+A/90 last season).

Pep Biel was decent in limited time after arriving last season and has been even better this season with 3 goals and 6 assists, though all of that came before this latest losing streak. Despite all those assists, his shot creation is significantly less than you’d expect from a true #10 (his SCA/90 this season is the same as Gabriel Pirani had last season).

Wilfried Zaha has four goals so far, but two of them were penalties, his shot-creation is a bit under 2024-Pirani levels, it sounds like his on-field effort comes and goes, and a few weeks ago he went on a “social media rant” about fan complaints…not a good look.

Charlotte’s other well-known attacker is Patrick Agyemang, a young-ish American forward with the crazy story that he went from playing Division III soccer in 2019 to earning four caps with the US men’s national team in 2025. He’s a big, strong forward who nevertheless likes running into space. Last season was his professional breakout season with Charlotte with 10 goals and three assists in about 20 games’ worth of minutes. Unfortunately, so far this season he’s well off that pace with three goals, no assists, and yeah, one of those goals was a penalty.

Tim Ream is another US national team connection. Ream was great for the US at centerback at the 2022 World Cup, but he’s going to turn 38 this season and age may be taking a toll. Charlotte has also frequently been playing him at fullback, which is an interesting choice. He was already pretty slow in 2022 so I’d certainly expect him to be very vulnerable to fast attackers. Lucky for him: DC doesn’t have any.

Now having said all that about Charlotte’s most notable players, I think it’s a real question how much we’re going to see any of them. They’re on a bad run of results in MLS, but unlike DC United, I don’t think they’ve given up their self-image as at least a dark horse MLS Cup contender. Whereas DC has been rotating starters amid these midweek games, here are the minutes played in the last three games (across just one and a half weeks) for the players mentioned above: 270 (Ream), 270 (Zaha), 239 (Biel), 215 (Abada), 201 (Agyemang).

If I’m right and Charlotte plays a bunch of its bench players, we may see significant minutes from DC academy alumni Eryk Williamson, who isn’t a starter but has appeared in almost every game. Many fans will remember that for a time, Williamson’s defection to Portland (technically DC traded him in 2018) was commonly cited as evidence for the incompetence of DC’s academy system. And that criticism was probably correct, but unfortunately, despite some periods of high-level play, Williamson’s career has been ravaged by injuries and he never realized his potential to be one of the elite of MLS.

What I’m Looking For

DC is four wins away from the Open Cup trophy, so they need to find some way, any way, to win. Technically they can do that via penalty kicks after another 0-0 game, but no one wants to suffer through that. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to keep tabs on how Lesesne is balancing between offense and defense. Can the knob turn slightly back towards the offense? Enough to, I don’t know, score a goal or two? Without opening the defensive floodgates, that is? We’ll find out.